1. Field
The following description relates to ray tracing apparatuses and methods, and more particularly, to ray tracing apparatuses having an integrated hardware unit including a traversal (TRV) unit combined with an intersection test (IST) unit and ray tracing methods therefor.
2. Description of Related Art
Three-dimensional (3D) rendering refers to image processing for synthesizing data of a 3D object into an image that may be seen at a given viewpoint of a camera.
Rasterization and ray tracing are two representative rendering methods. In rasterization, an image is generated by projecting a 3D object onto a screen. Ray tracing is a technique for generating an image by tracing a path of a light ray from a viewpoint of a camera toward each pixel of an image.
Among the rendering methods, ray tracing is capable of producing a high quality image by simulating the physical properties of light such as reflection, refraction, transmission, etc. However, since this technique requires a significant amount of calculation, it is difficult to perform high-speed rendering.
In ray tracing, operations requiring a large amount of computation are generation and traversal (hereinafter, referred to as ‘TRV’) of an acceleration structure, where scene objects to be rendered are spatially divided, and an intersection test (hereinafter, referred to as ‘IST’) between a ray and a primitive.